Not sure if it'll run Retro or not TBH. The chip is capable of it (128KB RAM, which is the important thing), but it uses PPS for all the pin assignments, and I am not sure if we have any PPS code in Retro yet - we haven't had any call for it since all the chips we normally use (the '695 or '795) lack that functionality.

It could, of course, be added.

What would be even better would be an MZ...DA version (when the MZ...DA is finally released), which would absolutely rock! Then it could run LiteBSD and everything. Add WiFi to it (when we finally have that working) and bam - a real laptop

_________________Why not visit my shop? http://majenko.co.uk/catalogUniversal IDE: http://uecide.org"I was trying to find out if it was possible to only eat one Jaffa Cake. I had to abandon the experiment because I ran out of Jaffa Cakes".

What would be even better would be an MZ...DA version (when the MZ...DA is finally released), which would absolutely rock! Then it could run LiteBSD and everything. Add WiFi to it (when we finally have that working) and bam - a real laptop

Anyway, I was considering making even this one around the MZ/EF initially, but eventually didn't because I wanted to run the MMbasic straight away, and that only works on MX470. But I am working on an alternative MZ/EF board to be a direct replacement of the current one.

So when are these awesome bits of kit going on sale? And how much will I have to shell out to get one?

_________________Why not visit my shop? http://majenko.co.uk/catalogUniversal IDE: http://uecide.org"I was trying to find out if it was possible to only eat one Jaffa Cake. I had to abandon the experiment because I ran out of Jaffa Cakes".

A pity we do not have retrobsd for mx470. I advertised the chip few y back as a "better" alternative to venerable 795. If the PPS is the only barrier to overcome.. - a shame @knivd - great! What are the other flatpacks there?

Now that we have the same (or similar) configuration system to LiteBSD, which has PPS, it shouod be a fairly simple matter to add PPS support to RetroBSD and get the mx470 working in it.

I don't have an mx470 system to hand right now, so I will have to build one to play with (I think I have some chips in my pic32 chip tray though). If I get some time this weekend I may take a look and see what I can fathom about the config and how to make PPS work.

Sent from my SM-T555 using Tapatalk

_________________Why not visit my shop? http://majenko.co.uk/catalogUniversal IDE: http://uecide.org"I was trying to find out if it was possible to only eat one Jaffa Cake. I had to abandon the experiment because I ran out of Jaffa Cakes".

_________________Why not visit my shop? http://majenko.co.uk/catalogUniversal IDE: http://uecide.org"I was trying to find out if it was possible to only eat one Jaffa Cake. I had to abandon the experiment because I ran out of Jaffa Cakes".

(Note to self: need to port my SSD1963 driver from DisplayCore to the RetroBSD LCD driver)(Second note to self: need to write a virtual TTY driver)

I shared the link with the guys (and gal) on the chipKIT steerage committee (so now people inside Microchip are aware of your work ) and an instant reply I had back from one of them:

Quote:

That is serious PCB porn right there. Wow. Getting those board fabbed wasn't cheap, but the look is really nice. Can you see one of these at every lab station in an undergrad microcontroller class?

It would make a seriously useful teaching tool - completely self contained like that.

_________________Why not visit my shop? http://majenko.co.uk/catalogUniversal IDE: http://uecide.org"I was trying to find out if it was possible to only eat one Jaffa Cake. I had to abandon the experiment because I ran out of Jaffa Cakes".

Actually the fabing these PCBs isn't that much expensive once the tooling is made, but of course I had to make more than one iteration in order to get everything cleared.

Kickstarter is a possibility, however they way things have gone there it needs serious campaigning to actually do something. I will consider it anyway if there is no other chance to make more of these.

Kickstarter has somewhat gone downhill recently, yes. There's so much crap being posted on there these days that it's hard for a decent project like yours to get any traction. And then of course there was that drone fiasco - that kind of knocked people's confidence in it somewhat.

It'd be nice if Microchip themselves fell in love with it - there's the possibility that they might - and want to buy it off you (or sponsor you to make them and sell them on their site or something).

Do you have a schematic available by any chance?

_________________Why not visit my shop? http://majenko.co.uk/catalogUniversal IDE: http://uecide.org"I was trying to find out if it was possible to only eat one Jaffa Cake. I had to abandon the experiment because I ran out of Jaffa Cakes".

I do have a schematic (well, obviously... ), but I still don't make it too much public yet so that will give some time to work out what to do next. I will PM it to you, though, or to anyone who request it personally.

I am actually using TST070COBT-01P from Team Source HK. $23 in single piece purchase. The thing is actually many 40-pin panels share the same pinout, so it is quite possible there are even cheaper options out there.

Ok, things are progressing on my end...With the valuable input from @majenko, the device might just come ready for rBSD, and I decided to make a quick revision and patch it for the MZ/EF as well (not on the same board, of course).Maybe a little kickstarter campaign will be after all. I hope you guys will give me a shoulder there

Btw: @120MHz 72mA, @80MHz 40mA - the half of the 795.. With 120/120/30(sdcard)MHz.. a killer platform for RetroBSD And with double precision SmallerC - The Ultimate Platform - TUP

Aaah... how could I not think of that?

Anyway, the three QFPs are - the MX470, SSD1963 video controller (that's the fat one), and PIC16F1517 which serves as keyboard and power controller. You might see that keyboard layout is a mixture of a few standards. I have developed it in the way that looks most universal. Dumped the useless 'Alt', 'Caps Lock', 'Win',... etc. keys, added 'Accent' key which lets you generate the full ISO-8859 table (in the current firmware 8859-15) with the support of non-English and special characters. Double press of either 'Shift' or 'Accent' locks them to the upper register.

The smaller chips are the RTC, the power, LCD backlight, touch screen, and a multiplexer to select the uSD drives.

The module on the bottom left is the extremely nice RFD21733 module.

There is also another 8-pin soic which is not in this picture because I added it later for the final release. It is optional external SPI memory (SRAM/FRAM or flash) - maybe swap file or other data.

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